VB and FB rexx libraries
Tina Hilton
library. Two of the lpars have VB rexx libraries but the other (a system we
took over a couple of years ago) has FB rexx libraries. So, we need to
convert either the VB libraries to FB or the FB ones to VB. Has anyone ever
done this before? Any tips on how to do this? I know that converting FB to
VB would be the easiest, but we'd still have to worry about members who have
line numbers. Which do most of you use: FB or VB?
Any tips, ideas, examples, experiences would be greatly appreciated.
Tina Hilton
arvato systems
----------------------------------------------------------------------
For TSO-REXX subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions,
send email to LIST...@VM.MARIST.EDU with the message: INFO TSO-REXX
Iappini, Robert
Dave Salt
link to web site below) will convert any type of file to any type of file;
e.g. FB to VB, VB to FB, PDS to PDSE, PDSE to Sequential, unblocked to
blocked, etc. etc. You simply select the file using line command "I"
(Information) and overtype any attributes you wish to change. Most of the
time I use this feature when I run out of space and need to increase
primary/secondary allocation or number of directory blocks etc., but it also
comes in handy for other things such as the task you're performing now. Hope
that helps,
Dave Salt
http://www.soft-center.com
>From: Tina Hilton <Tina....@ARVATOSYSTEMS.COM>
>Reply-To: TSO REXX Discussion List <TSO-...@VM.MARIST.EDU>
>To: TSO-...@VM.MARIST.EDU
>Subject: VB and FB rexx libraries
>Date: Wed, 7 May 2003 08:36:13 -0500
>
>We have 3 lpars that we would like to be able to share our system rexx
>library. Two of the lpars have VB rexx libraries but the other (a system
>we
>took over a couple of years ago) has FB rexx libraries. So, we need to
>convert either the VB libraries to FB or the FB ones to VB. Has anyone
>ever
>done this before? Any tips on how to do this? I know that converting FB
>to
>VB would be the easiest, but we'd still have to worry about members who
>have
>line numbers. Which do most of you use: FB or VB?
>
>Any tips, ideas, examples, experiences would be greatly appreciated.
>
>Tina Hilton
>arvato systems
>
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>For TSO-REXX subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions,
>send email to LIST...@VM.MARIST.EDU with the message: INFO TSO-REXX
_________________________________________________________________
MSN 8 with e-mail virus protection service: 2 months FREE*
http://join.msn.com/?page=features/virus
Bill Turner, WB4ALM
I specified the use of VB for Clist/Rexx libraries many, many years ago
for our shop.
VB was IBM's recommendation at the time, and use of VB instead of FB had
many
benifits, including faster "compile" at execution time, faster loading
from DASD,
less memory space requirements and an obvious saving of space on DASD.
We discovered that on the average, a clist/rexx lin contained about 30
bytes,
and in an FB library that meant that you were also storing a minimum of
42 blanks.
I have converted many "acquired" systems from FB to VB with no problems.
There
was a move to try to convert from VB to FB as I retired, because of a
change in
upper management, and a difference of opniion. The only advantage that
I can
see in using FB, is that IBM's maintenance (SMPE) is delivered in a FB
format.
Most of our third party vendors delivered clist/rexx libraries in FB and
VB formats.
The mechanism provided by IBM to "convert: is VB is extremely poor.
Our process was to build a set of maintenance packs, and keep the IBM
distributed
and maintained libraries in a FB dataset. We than ran a job that
converted IBM's,
libraies to VB and merged them into the libraries provided for use by
our users.
This gave us the advantage of maintaining the individual libraries foe
each vender,
and yet our users only concatenated three system libraries with their own...
cutting down on allocation and member location overheads. It also
provided us
with the abilty to selectively install products on cpu images, and in
fact, we
developed several automated facilities to build the individual images from a
common maintenance environment.
While we developed our own fb2vb conversion program, (for speed reasons)
you can also use functions built in to the "PDS" or "STARTOOL" products.
/s/ Bill Turner, wb4alm
Ryerse, Robin
SMP targets libraries in FB. That said, there are stil a lot of shops that
still convert the IBM shipped libraries to VB especially for SYSPROC
concatenation. You might find that the SYSEXEC concatention is FB while the
SYSPROC concatention is VB.
Beyond that look at CBT file 187
-----Original Message-----
From: Tina Hilton [mailto:Tina....@ARVATOSYSTEMS.COM]
Sent: Wednesday, May 07, 2003 9:36 AM
To: TSO-...@VM.MARIST.EDU
Subject: VB and FB rexx libraries
Tina Hilton
newer system.
Thanks to everyone who's replied and I'll look more at the CBT tape.
Tina
Harrington, Mark
Bill Turner, WB4ALM
nope.
Tina Hilton
turned on.
Frank Clarke
Hilton) wrote:
<E1B9C6F19B71D511B15700508BBB47C60371A6A2@USBAGE14>
>We have 3 lpars that we would like to be able to share our system rexx
>library. Two of the lpars have VB rexx libraries but the other (a system we
>took over a couple of years ago) has FB rexx libraries. So, we need to
>convert either the VB libraries to FB or the FB ones to VB. Has anyone ever
>done this before? Any tips on how to do this? I know that converting FB to
>VB would be the easiest, but we'd still have to worry about members who have
>line numbers. Which do most of you use: FB or VB?
>
>Any tips, ideas, examples, experiences would be greatly appreciated.
System programmers prefer (generally) FB because IBM mods arrive in
that format and they can just slosh them in without even thinking
about it, but system programmers tend not to write much code anymore,
especially in CLIST or REXX. Those who actually have to use them
prefer VB because it's more flexible. If you need a line to be 83
characters long, you don't have to go thru gyrations to split the
text; you just scroll right and keep typing.
Systems built to make life easy on users will invariably have VB
SYSPROC and SYSEXEC datasets; systems built to make life easy for
system programmers will invariably have FB datasets. As surely as the
night follows day.
Tina Hilton
guess we could run an edit macro against the whole library and turn off
numbering to simplify it, but I'm sure they'd rather not change the
statistics so we can still see when it was last changed. I'm getting some
ideas about how it can be done, though.
-----Original Message-----
From: Stephen E. Bacher [mailto:s...@DRAPER.COM]
Sent: May 08, 2003 9:37 AM
To: TSO-...@VM.MARIST.EDU
Subject: Re: VB and FB rexx libraries
TSO Data Utilities* "COPY" command is supposed to be able to
copy VB -> FB, FB -> VB, and has arguments to deal with
line number fields. I haven't tried it exhaustively, though.
*or Applied Software's replacements
- seb
Stephen E. Bacher
Stephen E. Bacher
>But the problem is when some members are numbered and some are nonum. I
>guess we could run an edit macro against the whole library and turn off
>numbering to simplify it, but I'm sure they'd rather not change the
>statistics so we can still see when it was last changed. I'm getting some
>ideas about how it can be done, though.
You're right, and I should have remembered; I ran into that very issue
when I was writing REXX execs to run the B2H utility against an entire
PDS of DCF/GML source files. I had to write REXX code to extract the
list of members, look inside each one and set the appropriate COPY
numbering/unnumbering parameters accordingly.
B2H itself, by the way, is a utility you can download from the Web that
converts GML to HTML. It has a numbered/unnumbered flag so it can
recognize either sort of input, but (like TSO COPY) it can't do this
on a member-by-member basis, so you're stuck if you have a mixture of
numbered and unnumbered source files.
Lionel Dyck
typically negate the need to convert. If the concern is primarily under
ISPF then check out my Product Launch Point (PLP) from
http://www.lbdsoftware.com or Tom Conley's Dynamic ISPF Package from
http://www.frontiernet.net/~pinnacle both of which provide an easy entry
to the world of dynamic ISPF.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Lionel B. Dyck, Systems Software Lead
Kaiser Permanente Information Technology
25 N. Via Monte Ave
Walnut Creek, Ca 94598
Phone: (925) 926-5332 (tie line 8/473-5332)
E-Mail: Lionel...@kp.org
Sametime: (use Lotus Notes address)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
For TSO-REXX subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions,
send email to LIST...@VM.MARIST.EDU with the message: INFO TSO-REXX
AIM: lbdyck
Tina Hilton
but it's hard to get people convinced it's time to change. We have a
horrible system on the 2 lpars with VB rexxes, which includes rexxes that
rebuilds the concatenations based on tables. Unfortunately, it wipes out
what been added via altlibs in some of my purchased applications, so then
they fail and I have to reinvoke them. Maybe some day I can convince
management it's important enough to spend the time to convert everything.
Tina
-----Original Message-----
From: Lionel Dyck [mailto:Lionel...@KP.ORG]
Sent: May 08, 2003 10:17 AM
To: TSO-...@VM.MARIST.EDU
Subject: Re: VB and FB rexx libraries